Assuring the quality of teaching is one of the cornerstones to school improvement and one of the key roles of the middle leader.
Knowing what is happening in the classrooms of the teachers you lead facilitates both individual and team development, ultimately culminating in a better experience and better outcomes for learners.
The stigma around quality assurance often makes the process more difficult – but if planned and executed effectively and collegiately, it can be a hugely powerful tool for middle leaders.
What should be quality assured?
Simply, everything needs quality assuring. A lot of people instantly think “quality of teaching” when someone mentions quality assurance and for schools this is of course one of the key focuses.
But although the quality of teaching in your department is a huge part of what you must concern yourself with, it is not the only thing that needs to be checked by middle leaders.
Effective Middle Leadership Series
Part 1: The principles of effective middle leadership: Published August 31. Click here.
Part 2: Six middle leadership styles: Published September 7. Click here.
Part 3: Leading the subject curriculum: Published September 13. Click here.
Part 4: Assessing and quality assuring teaching as a middle leader: This article
Part 5: Collective efficacy for your team: Published September 26. Click here.
For example, a big consideration for quality assurance and one of the first ports of call should always be the curriculum. Reflecting on what is taught, why it is taught and how it is taught is vital.
Quality assurance of long-term, medium-term and short-term planning means checking that what is being taught to the students is what you intended to be taught.
By quality assuring the resources and materials that are being used in your department, you are able to inform yourself about the developmental needs of those in your team, where the gaps are in subject knowledge, and most importantly address any mistakes or areas of ambiguity in the curriculum that may lead to misconceptions developing or problems for teachers.
As well as looking at the curriculum, quality assurance should also include the assessments that you intend to use summatively.
When collating data on the learning that has taken place, we need to ensure that the assessments are valid, relevant and accessible. If they are not, then we are increasing workload for no reason.
Taking the time to quality assure what the students are being expected to do will help streamline the assessment process. Consider the hours that go into marking and completing assessments – it is important you are getting this right and so quality assurance is vital.
Books are a contentious issue, but there is a strong argument for quality assuring the books in your department. When coupled with observation and discussions with students, you can quickly build a picture of what is happening in the lessons within the department.
Having said this, it is important to move away from the outdated “snapshot” approach and focus on the bigger picture when quality assuring, or you will quickly fall into the trap of ticking boxes.
Ultimately, the more you and your team reflect and critique what you do, the more informed you all will be.
Who should be involved?
It is often assumed that senior leaders should be the ones to do quality assurance. Although it is important that senior leaders are aware of what is happening with the quality assurance process in your team or department, I think it is much more prudent for middle leaders to oversee the quality assurance in their subject area.
To truly understand what is happening and why, and more importantly what can be done to improve things, pedagogical understanding and intricate subject knowledge are prerequisites that will help us to consider the how and the what while always asking why.
As a middle leader, you don’t need to do it all. In fact, building collective efficacy (see article five) is a sure-fire way to get buy-in from your team. Involve your teachers in the quality assurance process by teaming them up to carry out observations and book looks. Think about putting teachers in groups to plan and vet resources collaboratively. The possibilities you have when you involve others are endless, so delegate responsibility and trust your colleagues.
It is a good idea to also involve some eyes from outside your department’s context if you can. Although this might not always be possible, a fresh set of eyes can be a useful tool. Having somebody external validating what you are doing and pointing out potential areas for improvement can also give you a useful angle when it comes to change management.
How do you overcome the fear?
Gone are the draconian days of constant lesson grading (I hope), but unfortunately the negative legacy remains in some dusty corners of the education world.
Quality assurance conjures up ideas of judgement but in fact the ideal process does completely the opposite – it needs to be developmental and not judgemental if you want it to have an impact on your team and what you are all striving to achieve. We must build a culture of continuous and collegiate improvement.
Ensuring that your team sees quality assurance as a positive part of their teaching requires a plan. It is important to be clear and transparent as to what you are doing to maintain high standards in your department and why. Being up front with others makes them more inclined to participate positively with the processes.
The other important factor is to include yourself in the process. Too many leaders stumble when it comes to quality assurance because they don’t include themselves in the same cycle and don’t expose themselves to the same level of rigour as they do those they are working with.
It can feel uncomfortable, but by including yourself in the quality assurance process, you create equality and show that you buy in to the process too. Why should anybody else agree to being observed if you won’t?
Feedback
Highly effective middle leaders don’t just watch, they act. Gathering the information and carrying out the quality assurance processes is only part of the puzzle. What makes the real change, what really drives you forward, is how you respond to what you find.
There isn’t a need for piles of papers or endless documents, quality assurance should be stimulating discussions and getting teachers to reflect on the impact of teaching and learning.
If you are looking to truly develop your teachers, you must take the time to feedback to your team and to individuals, but you must also help them move on.
Being told what is working and what could be improved is only the beginning. As a middle leader, you need to help with the answers, either explicitly through mentoring or implicitly through coaching.
- Adam Riches is a senior leader for teaching and learning, a Specialist Leader in Education and author of Teach Smarter (Routledge, 2020). Follow him on Twitter @TeacherMrRiches. Read his articles for SecEd at http://bit.ly/seced-riches
Further information & resources
- SecEd Podcast: Effective middle leadership, February 2021: https://bit.ly/3KADitL